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View Full Version : Possibly a very dumb question !


MacBriar
10-13-2004, 08:50 PM
Well here goes (remember be nice ! also remember that there are no stupid questions ... but that there are a lot of inquisitive idiots)

Would more or less processing be required to play a 256K bitrate MP3 file compared to a 96K bit rate WMA file.

I ask this from the point of view of someone using the files on say a 4GB microdrive in a Pocket PC and thinking about the possible effects on battery life.

Any helpful comments welcome

Ewan :wink:

Jason Dunn
10-13-2004, 09:15 PM
While I can't back this up with any test results, my hunch is that there is no significant difference between playing back a 96 kbps audio file and a 320 kbps one. Both are below the treshhold of what would make the CPU work extra hard. Now video, on the other hand, might be a different story - I'm fairly sure that playing a 1000 kbps video file would use up more battery like than a 200 kbps one would...but, again, I have no hard data to back up that. It might be time for some tests (gee I have a lot of tests to perform!).

Kati Compton
10-13-2004, 09:32 PM
There is a bit of a power difference for those two different bit rates on *hard drive systems* for one simple reason - the higher bitrate file is longer. Reading more data from the (physically spinning) hard drive takes more power.

As for processing power? Depends on the algorithm/implementation used. But the more bits you need to process to produce a "result" would tend to indicate that you need more processing power.

Kowalski
10-15-2004, 06:23 AM
as long as you are using a microdrive, eighter way doesnt matter because the power drain for turning your harddrive is much more bigger to compare to proccessor power drain